Week 11

Academic Paper Final Draft

Introduction

This week, we will do the work of incorporating all of the feedback we've received and polishing our academic paper to make it the best it can be. At this point, you have received feedback from your instructor, your peers, and the UAF Writing Center tutors. You have done your research, developed your argument, and thought about why this issue is important. You have all the tools you need to make a polished draft of your academic paper.

There is no assigned reading this week. I do recommend looking at the Purdue OWL's Guide to MLA Citation and Formatting for guidelines about how to format your paper in an academic way. As style guides change over time, it is not necessary to memorize the formatting or citation guidelines. It is, however, necessary that you as a student know how to find current guidelines for the discipline you are working in and to implement those guidelines when creating your own paper. This is exactly what Purdue OWL can help you do. In addition to their webpages, you might also find their youtube videos helpful.

For your writing this week, focus all your attention on polishing your final draft. This is your only assignment this week. Below, I have included some helpful steps to polish your paper. You may do as many or as few of them as feels necessary for you to create an academic paper that you feel proud of.

However, the final draft that you turn in must:

Make an argument that is your own with clear exigency.
Use at least 5 academic sources as evidence supporting your argument.
Be at least 2000 words.
Be correctly formatted in MLA Style, including a Works Cited page.

Due Monday, November 6

Read

There is no reading this week! Spend all of your time incorporating your feedback and developing the final draft of your academic paper.

Write

Create the final draft of your academic paper (10 points)

This paper must:

Make an argument that is your own with clear exigency.
Use at least 5 academic sources as evidence supporting your argument.
Be at least 2000 words.
Be correctly formatted in MLA Style (See Purdue OWL for guidelines), including a Works Cited page.

Here are some steps that might help you get to the final draft of your paper:

Step 1: Incorporate feedback. Keeping your own goals from last week in mind, incorporate the feedback that you found most useful and most relevant to the paper you are creating.

Step 2: Polish your work. Go through your paper and look for spelling errors, punctuation errors, or places where you could be more clear. You may choose to run your paper through editing software.

Step 3: Read your work out loud. Alternatively, you could put your work through a document reader to have the computer read it to you or you could get someone else to read it. This will help you spot errors you might not see when you read in your head.

Step 4: Format your paper. Use Purdue OWL's comprehensive guide to MLA Formatting to format your paper in MLA Style. This includes giving your paper a title, page numbers, and using correct MLA citation.

Step 5: Go back to the Writing Center. This is a great time to go back to the UAF Writing Center and ask the tutor to go over your paper with a fine-tooth comb. They can help with grammar, punctuation, formatting, and citation.

Note: These steps are all optional this week.

Upload the final draft of your academic paper into the Google Drive folder below.

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